


A Higher Court

by lettered



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6855199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettered/pseuds/lettered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is meant to explain Clint and Natasha's positions on the Accords and is mostly self-indulgent meta parading as fic.  The "grain of sand/heaven" quote is Blake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Higher Court

When Clint first met Natasha he did not see her humanity. He saw a weapon. Not cold hard steel—a gun is room temperature.

 _That's not normal_ , was Clint's first thought. People have hot blood and cold minds; they aren't the temperature of ventilation. Clint didn't pry out Natasha's humanity because he saw it in there hiding; he went looking for a missing person.

What he found was a trigger, safety and a barrel. He found that Natasha can be a weapon all she wants; it’s who she is. The difference between Natasha then and Natasha now is she chooses when and where to shoot. She turns the safety off. She pulls the trigger.

When Loki made Erik Selvig into a weapon Selvig could see the entire universe in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower. Selvig is a scientist; he’s multitudes. Clint looked down the barrel of his life, through the site the Loki provided for him, and only saw his next target. He realized when he woke up that he’s a weapon too. His only choice is where he’s pointed.

Everyone should have a choice—even Bucky Barnes, the worst weapon of them all. Everyone should have a chance as well, and that's kind of the same thing. Everyone gets their own personal shot at redemption. Natasha took that shot, her body the gun, her faith the bullet.

No one is ever fucking going to take that away.

*

When Natasha first met Barton she tried to put a bullet in him. The second time she met him she put her faith in him. Just like a bullet it was strong and fast and hard. Unlike a bullet it cannot be surgically extracted; it doesn’t work its way out. It’s just like that bit of shrapnel that used to be in Tony’s chest: a symbol of the darkness that has been overcome. It could pierce Barton’s heart and kill him if she isn’t careful.

A year later she swore fealty to Nick Fury. That’s how Bruce put it: _swore fealty_. “Like a knight,” he’d said one day after New York, while they were slowly getting to know each other. 

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” she’d said.

“It’s not bad,” Bruce had said. “Knights wear shining armor.”

 _Like Tony_ , Natasha had wanted to say, but that wasn’t what Bruce had meant. Historic knights had a chivalric code that wasn’t just about courtly manners. It was about service. _Piety_.

Two years after that, Natasha swore allegiance to Steve Rogers. Bruce hadn’t said anything about that, but the word choice was accurate: she’d _sworn allegiance_. Under God. Indivisible. Liberty and justice.

Natasha gives her heart more freely than her service. She loves Laura and the kids, and she cares for Hill and Pepper. She cares for Stark, God help her, and she’d been in love with Banner. But those to whom she entrusts her _particular skill set_ numbers only three—a figure that does not include herself.

If she had been one of those Russian novelists Bruce liked so much, she would have put it this way: Barton is the orienting arrow; Fury, the slowly turning circle. Rogers is the magnet. 

Natasha has no moral compass of her own.

Barton thinks she does. Barton thinks that conscience is real, like calcium carbonite, a shell forged from the stuff of life that protects the soft moral fiber of decency. Barton’s identity is sessile; he has two feet planted firmly in a farm, rooted in family. 

Natasha doesn’t. Without anyone to hold her strings she drifts like wood. Knowing she has no moral certitude, she’s become a parasite, feeding off the certainty of others. Hoping she will save enough lives to make up for all the ones she took.

“Atonement isn’t accounting, Natasha,” Rogers had said, three months after the helicarrier crashed into the Triskelion. “You can’t compensate for what you’ve done by doing more.”

“I’m not compensating,” Natasha had said. She didn’t tell him about the ledger, because Steve doesn’t understand. Like Barton, Rogers can feel what he should do, when all she has are mental calculations. For them, free will is priceless, but for her it is expensive.

When the time comes to sign the Sokovia Accords, the numbers are not in The Avengers’ favor.

When the time comes to sign the Sokovia Accords, Natasha tries to do what Rogers does. What Barton does. She tries to look inside herself, find a voice, feel something—anything—that will tell her what is right. The only thing she feels is a persistent, consuming need for Steve to convince her. For Steve to prove to her the numbers are wrong. For Steve to make her _feel_ what he feels.

If anything convinces her that she should sign the Accords, it’s that. She doesn’t have a conscience; all she has is her reason and the few people she trusts with her ethical self: three men who alternatively play her Jiminy Cricket. If all she’s made of is strings and sawdust, how can she possibly trust herself to choose who can choose for her? How can she be trusted with anything at all?

*

They put the Winter Soldier in a glass prison for what he did in Vienna, as if that will make up for anything. No amount of prison time can change the color of the ledger or the color of the room in which they both were made. 

Knowing he's behind that glass, Natasha feels the scar from when she first met Bucky Barnes ache.

Barton has a similar scar, from when she first met him.

*

When Natasha learns Barton’s sided with Rogers in this fight, it only seems proof of the Accords’ legitimacy. The first time she’s ever made a choice all her own, and it’s causing her to take down the only men she’s ever trusted—obviously, she cannot be trusted to make decisions. Obviously, there should be oversight. Obviously, she has no moral center.

Fighting on the tarmac, she looks inside herself again. Tries to _find herself_ , like Barton said; to _listen to her heart_ , like Rogers said, to _just know_ , like Nick said. There is nothing there. She is empty, but for a bone deep regret:

_I should have listened to Rogers_

_I cannot bear to hit Barton_

_I would die for them_

_I would rather serve up my bleeding heart to them than see them hurt_

_I would rather have Steve Rogers and Clint Barton than a moral center_

*

Only after seeing Vision with Maximoff, Stark with Rhodes, Rogers with Barnes does it occur to Natasha that a conscience, perhaps, is not an authority over love. Perhaps it is not a resounding voice that demands the sacrifice of everything to black and white; perhaps it is a nuanced thing that twists and ripples and pulls. She wonders whether the voice in Steve that tells Steve right from wrong is strong and tight and full of conviction, like Steve. Perhaps it is abused, torn, searching for meaning; perhaps it's the voice of James Buchanan Barnes.

Putting her faith in Clint was never handing him the reins. It was classic defection: she smuggled herself aboard the vessel that would carry her north. That was her awakening: her fight to follow in someone else’s wake was a fight against a thousand waves pulling her to sleep, perchance to drown. Now she is awake.

Now she has a shot.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm letteredlettered on tumblr if you want to idk come be upset about this movie with me

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Higher Court](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6882484) by [lettered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettered/pseuds/lettered), [Vaysh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaysh/pseuds/Vaysh)




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